Survive for Now
by generalsleepy
Summary: Erik kidnaps and tortures Raoul. He finds that he can hurt Raoul, but not break his spirit. (Warning for blood, dislocated limbs, general unpleasantness. Erik is not nice).


The harsh, wet pop shuddered through Raoul's body, and he let out a scream that echoed off the stone walls.

The horrible, incessant pressure still didn't let up. He was sure his other shoulder was going to dislocate as well. As the agonizing seconds crawled by like years, he felt like the arm was going to be pulled entirely off. He was yelling, crying, thrashing his head side-to-side: everything he knew his captor wanted to see, aside from outright begging.

It took him a while to notice that the relentless pressure of the rack had stopped. The pain in nearly every one of his joints continued, none of them as worse as his dislocated left shoulder. He kept his damp eyes screwed tightly shut as he got his breathing under something at least resembling control. It wasn't as if it did anything to hide himself from the hawklike eyes of the man staring down at him; but it was at least something.

"With some molding we might be able to make you into a passable countertenor," the damnably cool, detached voice observed. "At least judging by that performance. Then, it seems like your voice might not have changed yet. Perhaps you could still make a fine castrato."

Raoul forced his eyelids apart and stared up at the man looming over him. Erik looked exactly as Christine had described, with the white porcelain mask covering half of his face, yet leaving his smug expression in full view.

Raoul wished that he could look as stoic and defiant as he had at the beginning, but the horrifying, electric pain in his dislocated shoulder had him breathing hard and gritting his teeth to hold back moans of pain. He turned his head away.

Erik grabbed him hard by the jaw and jerked his face back up. Even that movement caused fresh waves of pain shooting through him. Raoul could help but let out a yelp. Judging by what he could see of the man's face, Erik was supremely satisfied at the reaction.

Last night (he thought; in this dungeon he couldn't be sure of what time had passed) Raoul had just stepped into the foyer of his home, when suddenly a hand was clapped over his mouth and he was overwhelmed by a sharp, sickening smell His head filled with a deafening buzzing, then everything went black.

He'd woken up to water coursing up his nose and down his throat. For what had felt like forever, he'd been convinced that he had to be underwater, drowning. Finally, he'd come to enough to realize that he was strapped to the hard, wooden table. Then he had recognized the masked face staring down at him.

"Welcome back, my dear Vicomte," Erik had said. "I'm glad that we finally have the opportunity to… confer. Without interruptions."

"Wh… What… Where am I? What have you done?"

"This is my home." He had gestured around the small stone room, lit by torches on the walls. Not a room; a cell. "Well, a corner of it."

"Where…?"

"The exact location isn't relevant to you now."

"How did you get into my house?" Raoul had tugged hard at his restraints. He was bound hand and foot, arms forced over his head and legs pulled out straight. There was barely an inch of slack at either end.

"Embarrassingly easily."

A horrifying thought had hit him. "The staff. What have done to them!?" He'd fought even harder, even though he'd realized quickly the ropes weren't going to give.

Erik had only seemed amused by his struggling. "Laudanum in the tea. I'm sure they've had a long, peaceful rest. I must admit though, that level of concern for your servants is unusual for someone of your class."

In spite of his situation, he couldn't help but feel relieved. Maybe not feeling an ounce of pity was normal for a criminal, a murderer, but not for him. He'd told Erik as much.

The man had only laughed. "I think this meeting will be better than I had even hoped."

"What are you taking about? You have no right to hold me here! Let me go!"

"Do you know what this is?" he'd said, gesturing at the table Raoul was tired to.

A few memories from history classes had started worming their way into his head, but he had only shook his head.

Erik's smile had widened. Then, he'd reached for the crank on the side of the table Raoul hadn't noticed. Something just below panic had raced through him as the little bit of slack on the ropes disappeared.

"Antiquated," Erik had said, in a tone of casual interest, "but effective. As I'm sure you'll soon find."

The uncomfortable stretch had gradually turned into sharp, unignorable pain. When he'd started hearing little pops, accompanied by bursts of pain in his joints and up and down his arms and legs, he couldn't control gasps and yelps. He hated how much the weak, pained sounds amused Erik.

He would periodically stop pulling to switch to other tortures. He forced Raoul's head back and poured water into his face, making him feel like he was on the verge of death from drowning; he'd beaten his stomach and the soles of his feet bloody with a thin, hard length of wood.

All of that was better than the rack, though. The panic of the mock drowning was at least brief, and the pain from the switch was quick and steady. The feeling of being stretched was incessant, even more nightmarish in its slowness.

The fear, the feeling of doom, only became worse. His arms and legs were going to break. He was never going to be able to walk again. He was going to die. His body was going to break in two.

Erik hadn't asked any questions. He'd only interjected with the occasional mocking comment or explanation ("Those are your ligaments breaking" in response to Raoul's shocked gasp at the first popping sound).

Satisfied that he had Raoul's attention, Erik drew a knife from inside his coat. Raoul hoped his flash of fear wasn't too obvious.

He balanced the edge of the knife on Raoul's sternum, perpendicular to a still-throbbing red line from the switch. The knife barely touched his skin, but Raoul could tell it would take only the slightest pressure to draw blood. He tried not to breathe.

Slowly, with utmost care and deliberation, Erik dragged the blade down Raoul's chest.

Raoul screamed.

The cut ended just above his navel. Raoul had barely a second to process the pain, before Erik added another cut beside it, shorter but slightly deeper. In a flash the knife was at his upper thigh, leaving a horizontal slash. Raoul was faintly at least relieved that the skin there hadn't been broken before.

Next was a cut across his collarbone; then one on the inside of his elbow; then just below his other armpit.

Each cut seemed carefully planned and executed, as if Erik were painting a picture, rather than carving up his flesh.

There was another thin cut, almost an incision, on his chest as the knife trailed down. The point of the blade rested in the hollow beside his pelvic bone just above the waistband of his drawers, the only scrap of fabric he had on him.

He remembered the threat from earlier. He quickly shoved it out of his mind, knowing Erik wanted him to be as frightened and unsettled as possible. Raoul was going to deny him that pleasure as much as he could.

With a deft flick of his wrist, Erik cut through the waistband. Raoul swallowed hard; he could feel Erik's unnaturally sharp, yellow eyes boring into him.

He slashed a deep line across Raoul's lower stomach, just above his groin.

Raoul yelped in pain, his back instinctively arching. Thankfully Erik had pulled the knife away, only to put two more cuts on his thigh, then one on his shin.

Raoul could feel blood oozing from the burning cuts littering his body. Erik stared down at him with a smile that was almost rapturous. "You are truly lovely like this. A work of art, if I do say so myself. I wish that I had a camera. I would say that you should see yourself, but then, you wouldn't be able appreciate something liked that, would you?"

"What do you want from me?" Raoul wanted the words to come out as a demand, but his voice was weak and wobbly.

He'd asked the question before, but Erik had ignored it. Now, though, reached out and trailed his fingers, cold and near-skeletal, down Raoul's cheek. "Do you want me to stop?" His voice dripped with condescension.

Raoul jerked away from the touch. "Just tell me."

"I only have one relatively simple request. Then, this can all be over."

"What do you want?" Raoul asked, already certain that he wasn't going to comply.

"You will immediately leave Paris, to never return or have any contact with Christine Daae."

Raoul didn't have think before responding, "I will do as you say, if you promise to never bother Christine again."

Erik blinked, for once on the back foot. "What did you say?"

"I'll leave and never so much as speak to Christine again, if you do the same and just leave her be." He swallowed hard, trying to ignore the numbness radiating out from his dislocated shoulder. "I was offered a position on a rescue mission to the Arctic. I'll accept it. I'll tell Christine that my family forbid us to marry, and I couldn't bring myself to disobey. It will hurt her, but I know she will recover. Meanwhile you will also take your leave. You've been talking this whole time about all the exotic locations where you've learned your 'art.' You can return to one of them."

"And leave Christine." Erik seemed almost confused by the concept.

"You know as well as I that Christine is strong. She isn't a prize. She can live a full and remarkable life, without either of us." Now that the sharp, all-consuming pain of the dislocated (probably separated he was starting to think) shoulder had faded into the awful numbness, he was more aware of the torn tendon or ligament in his left ankle and in his right knee. Even if he left there with the ability to walk eventually, he wouldn't have been able to do more than crawl if he were let loose right then. If he left there at all. "You don't even have to let me go. If it's truly what you're set on, you can torture and kill me and leave my corpse for the rats. Anything, as long as Christine goes free."

For several long, heavy seconds Erik simply stared at him, his expression inscrutable. Raoul was left to dwell on the pain pulsing through his whole body. He breathed through his nose as concentrated on not giving Erik the pleasure of hearing him whimper–or at least only in the midst of the torture.

He remembered the time that he'd dislocated his shoulder at sea. The moment it was clear what happened, all the crew available had hustled him to the ship's doctor. (Maybe because he looked much younger than his age, much of the crew tended to mother hen him at every opportunity). He'd bitten down on a leather strap while the doctor set the bones. Even later that day he'd had to be constantly reminded not to use the arm before it was fully healed.

Raoul had known pain. If he was lucky, he would know it again. In any case, he wouldn't let Erik cow him.

The visible half of Erik's lip curled in a snarl. "Stupid boy!" he screamed, a shrill, desperate note to his voice. "I love her! I've loved her from the moment I laid eyes on her. Christine will be my wife, and we will be together for the rest of our lives! We would be together already if not for you!" The hand holding the knife was, for the first time, shaking faintly.

Raoul shook his head. "If you loved her, you would want only what was best for her, even if it was painful for you. You know Christine. You know that she needs to be free. I'm prepared to never so much as see her again, if it will keep her free. If you love her, you'll be willing to do the same."

"Liar!"

Raoul didn't have any warning before the knife came down again. The cut across his stomach was far less closely controlled than the others.

"You stupid, ignorant child! You know nothing of Erik!"

The next cut, an arc across his chest, caught one of his nipples and for a moment, Raoul's mind went blank from sheer pain. He thought that he might have passed out. He was only faintly aware of the knife clattering to the ground and then the creak of the wooden crank.

The dislocated shoulder must have been loose enough that he felt the pain first in the relatively intact one. He didn't have enough energy left to scream; all he could manage was something between a grunt and a gasp.

The pain of the various cuts and his injured shoulder were briefly muted as something audibly tore in his knee. Raoul wasn't sure exactly what sound was coming out of him, but it was high and ragged and there was no way that he could stop it.

It didn't matter at this point whether he was whimpering or screaming at the top of his lungs. He'd made his point, and both he and Erik knew it.

The machine didn't let up, and Raoul wondered if Erik was going to keep turning the crank until something inside him broke enough to kill him.

Finally, though, after several more sickening pops, the pressure ceased. Raoul gasped for breath. The pain was so widespread he couldn't begin to isolate any specific injuries. The shoulder still hurt the most; he could barely feel his fingers, and at this point he was almost certain the arm was permanently damaged. That didn't matter either. All that mattered was that Christine was safe, and he had done all that he could on that front for the moment.

In Erik's eyes he was just an ignorant child, insignificant. He had forgotten that Raoul was an officer of the French Navy. He was a de Chagny.

The daggers Erik glared down at him were as sharp as the knife he'd wielded before. He was fuming with the overwhelming, directionless rage of a child. He couldn't even summon up some insult or declaration of the horrific ways he would torture him.

He ground both hands into fists and made a low, growling sound in the back of his throat. "Stupid boy!" he spat, clearly out of anything else to say. "You understand nothing!" He turned on his heel and stalked out of the room. He slammed the heavy for shut behind him.

Raoul didn't think he heard Erik lock it, but it wasn't as if that made escape any more likely in the state he was in. Escape was still in mind; he wasn't going to give up this easily. But, at least for this moment, he could sustain himself on what felt like some kind of victory.

He could survive, and he could wait. Erik had no power over him in any way that mattered.


End file.
